We teach interpretive skills training from introductory to train-the-trainer levels. Innovative interpretation emerges when teams trust each other, try new things, and share openly. That’s why fostering genuine connection among your team is woven into all of our trainings:
- Ask Me About My Life: Why and How to Use Dialogic Questions (1 day)
- Foundations of Audience Centered Interpretation (3-4 days)
- How to Help: Coaching Audience Centered Interpretation (1 day)
- Teaching Others: Audience Centered Interpretation train-the-trainer (1 week)
Team-Building Add-Ons
For groups looking for explicit team-building, we also offer add-on experiences. From improv to block printing to close looking, these sessions help your group laugh, create, discuss, and/or slow down. Strengthening the team’s foundation leads to better learning.
How do we teach?
We break the interpretive development process down into parts then focus on a family of skills for each part: visioning, question-asking and active listening, and filtering.
- We anchor the interpretive experience in big, actionable, real-world issues by leading interpreters through visioning.
- We boost interpreters’ abilities to invite expression through question-asking and active listening.
- We support interpreters’ storytelling skills through exercises in filtering information.
The skillsets of visioning, questioning, and filtering scale and apply across formats of interpretation.
Work With Us
If your team or workplace would like to set up a training, please reach out to us at InterpWorks@gmail.com. Sessions and pricing are flexible. Our goal is to support your interpretive team in doing their best work.
With the concepts above (or earlier iterations of them), we’ve worked with:
- Alaska Regional Office, National Park Service
- Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
- Cabrillo National Monument
- Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park
- Climate Change Response Program, National Park Service
- Congressional Chorus
- Denali National Park and Preserve
- Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
- Gateway Arch National Park
- George Washington Memorial Parkway
- Golden Gate National Recreation Area
- Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
- Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park
- Marymount University
- Mill Valley Forum Against Racism
- Mount Rainier National Park
- National Association for Interpretation, Region 10
- National Capital Region, National Park Service
- National Conservation Training Center
- National Mall and Memorial Parks
- Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
- Point Reyes National Seashore
- Portland State University
- Santa Clara County Parks
- Stephen Mather Training Center, National Park Service
- Take Action Skagway
- The White House and President’s Park, National Park Service
- Ward 2 Mutual Aid
- Wolf Trap Park for the Performing Arts
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